Ironically, once you decide a person or group is "stupid," you are relieved from thinking about them

[RadiationTherapy]

Once permanent labels such as "stupid" "deplorable" "degenerate" and so on are affixed to your target, you no longer have to put forth any effort of thought or persuasion. The "othering" is complete and you can engage in hate, violence, exacting revenge, or whatever reprisals please you. Under such circumstances, your enemy is no longer human. They are merely stupid, deplorable, and deserving of institutional and personal violence.

For myself, I am unimpressed with such labels and, since I am mostly anti-violence, will continue to think, act, and engage with my ideological rivals. I may not be able to preserve a peaceful stance for long, but I will not cut off my empathy by assigning such labels to large groups. To me, that is a red-alert for authoritarianism and fascism.

[uponit7771]

1. We can't call smart people stupid just for the sake of empathy no?

[Bettie]

2. I'm not violent

and I do not wish harm on any of those who support the vulgar yam, but at the same time, I am not willing to expend the energy to be sympathetic to them.

It would be bashing my own head against a brick wall over and over, wondering why it continues to hurt and doesn't do any good.

Why reach out to those who are eagerly demanding their own destruction? Why reach out to those who would eagerly destroy the lives of others because Dear Leader demands it?

To paraphrase my Grandma (and probably everyone's grandma): They made their beds, now they can lie in them.

[RadiationTherapy]

4. Yes, I agree with you to an extent.

I am not saying "to be critical is to be violent" nor an I saying that reaching out all day every day isn't exhausting or somewhat futile. What I am saying is that by attaching a label like "stupid," then you have categorized a person or group in such a way as to render them less-than-human. That doesn't make one inherently violent in my line of thinking, but it does make a person susceptible to being lead to violence. De-humanization is the first step.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

7. Hitler and his followers were deplorable and degenerate. As I said some were very intelligent.

Did I dehumanize him and them and if so were they not deserving of opprobrium and censure?

[RadiationTherapy]

18. I do think there comes a time when one does need to de-humanize an enemy and fight.

However, it took quite a bit of time and thought before America went for it in that regard.

[bravenak]

110. They dehumanize me everyday. They want to ban muslims, stop and frisk me, deport my family

But here yiu go sympathizing with them and acting like we are wrong for JUDGING people who voted for a man who thinks mexicans are rapists and blacks are lazy. Be nice if you judged them instead of us. I guess it's easier to sympathize with white xenophobes than with us minorities who are HARMED BY THE DEPLORABLE POLICIES!!!

[Cary]

172. Where is the upside in empathizing with white supremacists?

I agree with you. They are reprobates and when you dance with the devil the devil doesn't change, the devil changes you.

[Bettie]

11. My general label is

hate-filled.

Every last one of them that I have spoken to hates some group of people so much that the things he said were acceptable to them.

I'm related to a frightening number of these people and every one of them nauseates me. I can barely speak to them now that their masks have been removed and I see them for what they really are.

My in-laws hate blacks, gays, Muslims. My brothers hate blacks, Hispanics, Asians, gays, liberals, and college educated people. Oh, and uppity feminist bitches. My sisters in law agree with the brothers. They all adore Mango Mussolini. They also all state that he is a man of god, that he has been chosen by their scary, racist god to rule the world.

I'm also surrounded by them in my town. Similar views abound.

I get that they are human, but I don't have to interact with them beyond basic civility. They are not reachable. They are incapable of change.

[RadiationTherapy]

20. They may very well be unreachable and action may be necessary to revoke some power from them

But, still, I think it is important not to dehumanize others to quickly for there one may be susceptible to being lead to engaging in or passively approving of fascist violence.

[AngryAmish]

52. They are both deplorable AND irredeemable.

[Alice11111]

61. Remind us about their presence & beliefs. Relatives?

In my blue little town, with my friends, I am rarely around them. It is easy to forget how many there are.

However, I also have relatives across the state line 300 miles away (one reason I moved away over 30 years ago), who are like yours. They used to send me the most vile internet crap.
They don't anymore. Even though it disgusted me and I could rarely finish reading it, it kept me aware of what about 1/3, maybe more, of Americans are really like. I think some are passionate about their beliefs and others just aren't that bothered by it, or they just want to fit in with their peers. Together, they make up about half. Of course, I have no real stats, except for voting and the same polls we all see. Look at the news people watch. Half watch Fox or worse now. There is a STRONG anti intellectual, even anti intelligence, bias.
They go for the knee jerk RW positions and believe it's anti American or even anti- Christian to question them.
They claim not to be racists, but they ARE through and through. Plus, the religious hypocrisy makes me angry.

My brother, who is Pres of a corporation, carries a gun in his briefcase. He and his wife are open carry certified. I know he has a lot of guns. They have a very smart and talented 9 year old daughter. I worry about her and the guns, and I've tried to give him hints about accidents. He has obviously limited my contact with her because of my politics ...she would occasionally Facetime me and tell me she loves me, talking quietly, and say, they are asleep or in the bathroom. If you met them, you would probably like them. Hos wife is sweet and thoughtful, and he is funny as hell. We never talk politics, but of course it sneaks in, when values come up. He doesn't send me crap, but he asked me not to park my car with my Obamanos sticker in front of his house, in his opulent neighborhood. I ignored him, and it pissed him off. Yet, if i have a problem, he always checks in on me, and i do the same with his family.

My mother and aunt read Drudge, and who knows what else, and watch fox news. My aunt has all of OReilly's books on her coffee table, in her very large, immaculately organized and expensive home. They have sent me some stupid, awful insidious crap, always with some nonapplicable scripture at the bottom.Birther stuff. They sent Birth certificates saying Obama was born in Kenya.(My response was, photoshopped.) They sent Anti-Muslim, the stupidest things that anyone with a brain would question...everything you don't even want to think about. I look at the email trails, and there are a thousand senders who sent it to 50 others. I have a 2nd or 3rd cousin, closer to their age, who fact checked everything and called them out. How she had the time, I don't know? It was a whole lot of shit with crapola underlying assumptions. So, they took us both off the list. If I do get something, and it looks like they send me the stuff that they don't even understand is offensive, I ignore it. My daughter does too. So, our silence speaks. When I get non offensive stuff, I'll respond briefly, like one or two words.
Yet, my aunt is wonderful in some ways. I had a serious injury and she took me to the Mayo Clinic for a week. She is always there for anyone in our family in need, and she still works full time in her mid 80s.

After the sexual predator tapes came out, I asked my mother not to vote for DT. I've never asked her about her vote before. My daughter was raped, as a very young child. My mother had to testify, and be cross examined, so I thought surely she would get that one. She didn’t. She said, All the women were liars. Bill Clinton was worse. Hillary and Bill murdered people. What DT said was fake news, locker room, etc. She sent me a text after the election and told me, life is good, we won!

I feel guilty because I don't call my mother, not since Christmas, and my brother checks in with her a lot, but I procrastinate. She's in her mid 80s and obviously won't live long. I was helping her with a newspaper subscription, and she was reluctant to get a year because she probably won't make it that long We have had too many brutal arguments, most of which she started. Twenty years or more ago, she was calling Hillary a bitch, just to poke me.
She pulls the Jesus card, as they all do, which makes me sick. I want to say, there was a commandment about that, not taking the Lord's name in vain.

Mostly, we all communicate by sending photos and videos of the kids or pictures of pretty animals.

[Glamrock]

153. I don't think labeling people as stupid is the least bit dehumanizing.

There are stupid people in the world. People who are incapable of critical thought. There's no getting around that fact.

[RadiationTherapy]

155. All I can contribute here is that I have not yet met such a person.

Every person I have ever spoken to is capable of critical thought. Lucky me!

[Glamrock]

158. Yes you are.

I can't count the number of people I've met in my life that vote Republican because "I'm tired of all my tax dollars going to lazy n*****s on welfare, goddamnit!" If that is your biggest issue and you don't know white women make up the majority of people on public aid or that there is a 5 year lifetime limit on public aid? Yeah, you're a fucking idiot who's incapable of critical thinking. That's just the way that is. I'm not being snarky, I'm glad you don't know these assholes...

[GoneOffShore]

167. THIS in so many ways.

[Gothmog]

196. Reaching out to trump voters is a waste of time

These voters will not change their feeble minds.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

68. Because they have votes!

Saying "we shouldn't reach out to them because they're bad people, so it's OK if they suffer the consequences of Trump", is like saying "why should I help patch that hole in our boat, it's at your end and it's your fault for making it".

[Bettie]

79. They may have votes

but they will never vote for anyone who doesn't have an R after their name.

Literally will never happen for the vast majority of them.

That orange thing is their choice. Hate is their choice.

And here's the thing. In your boat analogy, "they" are sitting in their end with a hammer punching more holes into the boat and demanding that "I" stop destroying their boat. "My" only hope is to grab onto a bucket or bit of wreckage, because the guy at the other end is bound and determined to sink both of us.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. NAZIS were deplorable and degenerate. Some did have IQs though.

[KittyWampus]

5. I agree with you but DU is a place for venting. And largely falling in line with the group.

We can only hope that Democrats in leadership positions really start working things out.

In many ways the last election showed us a Democratic party that is woefully behind in party infrastructure and technology.

The DNC chair should have already been seated and working on the problems we face.

[RadiationTherapy]

21. I agree with you and I do think venting is important.

The party is terribly organized now both ideologically and in practice.

[1965Comet]

6. God that's dumb

"The "othering" is complete and you can engage in hate, violence, exacting revenge, or whatever reprisals please you. "

Sorry, but that does not follow...

[DemocratSinceBirth]

10. That's a good point.

One can intensely dislike someone and wish not to see him or her harmed.

[RadiationTherapy]

28. I think it certainly does follow in terms of history, racism, etc.

One gives one's self permission since the other is so deplorable and unreasonable and so on.

[JCanete]

83. I followed. Explain where you got lost? nt

[mathematic]

133. Poster never said they got lost. Stop othering them.

The poster makes a judgement on the quality of the OP's argument. In particular, that's it's not logically sound and it is dumb.

You use the language of group membership to describe your understanding of the OP's argument. "You" follow. Your post makes a claim: that you understand the OP's argument and the poster does not. And now that you've successfully othered the poster, you can engage in hate, violence, exacting revenge, or whatever reprisals please you.

[JCanete]

135. Um, okay that was cute, but tell you what, rather than assuming your logic sucks, as the poster I

responded to did without bothering to present any evidence, I'll say, you've lost me. I'm not following how you got to where yo got.

Also, I don't think of the poster I responded to as stupid. Thinking somebody is wrong is so not on the same page. We all have opinions about who has the right of it and who has the wrong of it. That isn't the same as assuming that somebody is mechanically dysfunctional.

[1965Comet]

166. Logically, violence against an individual does not follow merely from

thinking that individual is "stupid".

I, for one, have never committed a violent act against someone I merely thought was "stupid", and I bet you haven't either.

[JCanete]

170. thinking that there is a pronounced inferiority that people have in an area such as intelligence,

is absolutely dehumanizing. It is making somebody other ... less than. We don't use that kind of language to describe learning challenged people for that very reason. Actually, I'm probably using an antiquated term there. I think its differently abled.

It is first and foremost, its own form of violence.

I get it, these people aren't marginalized, and this is a reaction to the violence they visit upon others, but it doesn't change that it is itself violent, even if it pales by comparison. Second,it isn't that one HAS to follow from the other. It is that historically it does. A trend may not be a rule, but it's pretty damn convincing of the likelihood. You and I may not do any such thing. Just as most right wingers may not be incited to personally do violence by something they see on Fox News. And yet that messaging incites violence and we see the evidence. I doubt we're going to see that shit manifest on the left except for in extremely abberated circumstances, but I doubt we're going to see it on the left because we refuse to be an an echo chamber for each other here. We ARE free thinkers. We don't uniformly buy into the rhetoric or the hate, because we're the ones who appreciate humanism and the valid aspects of behaviorism and genetic realities of human sameness...etc. So I laud posts like the op's that try to remind us to keep some perspective.

[1965Comet]

174. Whatever happened to "To err is human"?

Thinking that someone is stupid is not the same thing as saying they are not human. Regardless of whether or not they are "marginalized", support for Trump is a badge of stupidity in my book and I will call it when I see it. I am not interested in committing violence against these people.

In your world, no one could ever have any negative opinions about someone else without "dehumanizing" them.

[JCanete]

176. no. to do something stupid is not the same as to be stupid. To err is not the same thing as to be an

error. Tell me you see the difference.

[1965Comet]

182. So we can just never call someone "stupid"

unless literally everything they do is stupid?

I disagree. We all acknowledge that intelligence exists, and that it exists on a continuum, no?

[JCanete]

184. To call somebody stupid is to make assumptions about the context via which they came to their

conclusions...the information they filtered and why they had cultural reasons for seeing things the way they did, some of which comes from needs of acceptance within those households and communities from an early age, and all kinds of fraught psychological realities.

I am constantly thinking these days, about how some people who we think of as crazy often have perfectly working minds except for in one respect or another. It isn't always that they are thinking irrationally, sometimes its the information that they're getting that is wrong. Given just how bizarre that information is, their behavior in the face of it is entirely rational.

Yes, we know that some brains have underdeveloped regions. We can map that objectively. We might even see a correlation to intelligence as we measure it, and certainly we know that cognition comes from the brain, so that isn't a surprise. But subjectively deciding who is stupid, who's brains are working or not working...who's brains are better and who's are worse...is not a valuable practice, although the field of psychology has many many archaic decades of disagreeing with me. Explaining why some people are inferior has been something of an art form for some time, and that's not really any fairer to art to call it art rather than science, because art's value too, is in trying to get to the truth.

Usually, if somebody is drawing conclusions about intelligence, it is to drive a wedge between themselves and that person or group...to create an artificial hierarchy of better-ness.

[1965Comet]

187. From Merriam Webster:

Definition of stupid
1
a : slow of mind : obtuse
b : given to unintelligent decisions or acts : acting in an unintelligent or careless manner
c : lacking intelligence or reason : brutish

Looks like "b" fits perfectly and requires no determination of whether or not someone is "human".

[JCanete]

188. as I said elsewhere it has all the baggage. You can mean it and hear it one way, but people will

hear it their own way. You can't distance the meaning from slow and obtuse, or lacking intelligence, and nobody here actually seems to want to, so I think your point is moot.

[1965Comet]

191. Well, far be it from me to use a word according to its definition around here...

I'm a bit more optimistic about my fellow DUers, though.

[Orrex]

192. No, that's not it.

To call somebody stupid is to make assumptions about the context via which they came to their conclusions...

To call someone stupid in the current context is to draw a conclusion about their behavior and decision-making ability based on evidence and precedent. Very different from what you're describing.

Yes, we know that some brains have underdeveloped regions. We can map that objectively. We might even see a correlation to intelligence as we measure it, and certainly we know that cognition comes from the brain, so that isn't a surprise.

You're conflating functional stupidity with an organic neurological abnormality, which is intellectually dishonest of you.

Suppose that we look at a person of full mental capacity who is acting in a grossly unintelligent manner and to say "that person is stupid." To call such an insult violent or dehumanizing is to lack all comprehension of what "violence" and "dehumanizing" actually mean. Certainly that insult doesn't imply any automatic justification for actual violence.

In stark contrast, it would be the height of cruelty to label as "stupid" someone with a profound cognitive impairment, whether due to birth, injury, illness or otherwise--that kind of cruelty leads (and has lead) to forced sterilization, forced lobotimization and to outright execution. That is violence. That is dehumanizing. Calling someone a mean name based on their own voluntary, conscious action is hardly the same. It's hardly even in the same universe.


So I'm frankly not interested in word games seeking to scold nasty ol' Liberals for calling fully able Trump voters "stupid" when those stupid Trump voters stupidly cast their stupid votes for their stupidly chosen candidate. In fact, I prefer to call them "fucking stupid" to eliminate any possible ambiguity.

[JCanete]

194. nonsense, you're playing games. When we have posts that say, "Yes, we are saying you are stupid!"

I don't think that your parsing is at all genuine. The word itself conflates those meanings. No poster I've seen except for the last two in response to my own, is trying to make a distinction about whether they mean intelligence or willfully dumb choices.

Besides, where does decision-making behavior derive from. If its cultural and learned, where is the win in calling people names? If it's intrinsic, again where is the win in doing this? Are you saying its something else entirely?


I don't know why you're telling me those things aren't in the same universe. I said that. I didn't try to make them the same thing. It's still violence, no matter how trivial you see it. It's still violence, no matter how much worse and how badly some might need it as a small semblance of counter-balance to cope with the very frightening shit that some right-wingers are willing to engage in, or even the mainstream common-place micro-aggressions towards women and people of color for that matter.

Ultimately, when it is shouted into the world, it is still ineffective and damaging to change. Hell, even if your diagnosis were correct, it would be a reckless and counter-productive strategy.

There are a lot of levels of dehumanization, but if you are lumping people wholesale into a group and calling them stupid, that is an example.

[Orrex]

197. Um, no.

I don't know why you're telling me those things aren't in the same universe. I said that. I didn't try to make them the same thing.

Yes you did.

It's still violence, no matter how trivial you see it.

See? Right there--you falsely insist that they're the same thing: violence, immediately after you claimed that you didn't.

You're also making use of a tired and transparent rhetorical trick by which you equate two things (despite insisting that you're not) so that you can then conveniently exploit the very worst aspect of one category to condemn the most trivial aspect of the other. I've seen it many times and can spot it from miles away. It's intellectually dishonest.

Or maybe we can give you the benefit of the doubt and allow that you're engaging in unintended equivocation. If they're both violence, they're both violence in the same way that jaywalking and mass murder are both crimes.

There are a lot of levels of dehumanization, but if you are lumping people wholesale into a group and calling them stupid, that is an example.

Fortunately, that's not what I'm doing. Also, that's not what dehumanizing is.

You have a broad and ultimately circular fits-all definition of dehumanizing, just as you have a broad and fits-all definition of violence. When you call to order a pizza, do you take time to get to know the person who answers, learning of that person's hopes and dreams and the sorrows that they've face? No? Then congratulations, you monster: you've dehumanized that person, reducing them into a pizza-order-taking machine.

Where o where will such violence end?

[JCanete]

202. Except that theoretically jaywalking is victimless. It certainly isn't knowingly intended to insult

or belittle someone.

Honestly though, you act like words haven't historically been used and intended as violence. They are used against people of color and homosexuals and women constantly. You're pretending as if that can't be the case. That there's nothing there because on the scale those little words can't harm somebody.

And it is simple. When you insist on telling somebody that he or she is stupid, what is your angle? You are just saying it matter of factly? You don't actually intend to insult them? You don't want them to feel humiliation or self-loathing? Clearly, from the posts on this subject, claiming that would be bullshit.

But as I've said many times, it's not like these people are marginalized. If you want to engage in that, they are not going to be destroyed because of your approach, they will just be even less likely to hear us. They will feel your intentions as violent. It doesn't fucking matter if they themselves are violent. That is so beside the point.

What isn't is when we engage in, whether you want to pretend we were or weren't, rhetoric that is literally saying certain people are literally less intelligent. We all know who are not going to be the adults in the room. We agree that there is a certain ignorance rampant on one side of the political spectrum. But why do you need so badly to label them as stupid?

Given the demographics, for some people that distinction is earned almost entirely by virtue of them being born in the wrong place of the wrong state.

Assuming stupid means assuming there is something fundamentally wrong with their brains. I don't know if you've said it, but it's rampant in these posts. "They are incapable of change." "They are a lost cause." That is going to be one sad self-fulfilling prophecy for all of us.

[Orrex]

203. Again and again you misstate my position

And you pretend that I don't understand yours.

Honestly though, you act like words haven't historically been used and intended as violence.

Nowhere have I suggested that, so I have no need to respond to that false claim.

They are used against people of color and homosexuals and women constantly. You're pretending as if that can't be the case. That there's nothing there because on the scale those little words can't harm somebody.

Equally ignoring this bit of scolding condescension because it depends on your false claim above.

And it is simple. When you insist on telling somebody that he or she is stupid, what is your angle? You are just saying it matter of factly? You don't actually intend to insult them? You don't want them to feel shame or humiliation? Clearly, from the posts on this subject, claiming that would be bullshit.

Significantly, I note that you are not stupid, and as such I refuse to accept that your question here is genuine.

In identifying a Trump voter "stupid," or more specifically "fucking stupid," I am calling them out for a disastrously terrible decision that is already having serious worldwide negative repercussions. These are adults who are making stupid decisions that will cause real and lasting harm, and I'm not at all interested in your scolding admonitions. By their stupid actions we shall know them, and therefore I call them out for their stupidity.

Frankly, Squinch has already destroyed your entire position from top to bottom, so rather than having me rehash those posts, I encourage you to read them again for yourself.

If you want to engage in that, they are not going to be destroyed because of your approach, they will just be even less likely to hear us. They will feel your intentions as violent. It doesn't fucking matter if they themselves are violent. That is so beside the point.

This once again is the scolding admonition that we must "reach out to" and "understand" and "empathize with" the unrepentant Trump voter, to which I say again: fuck that.

Short of an actual catastrophe, no amount of reasoning or evidence or fact will persuade them that their vote for Trump was a terrible decision, so it is simply a waste of effort to try. Before you scold me again, that's not dehumanizing anything: it's recognizing futility and cutting my losses.

I'm not pulling this out of thin air, either. Since January I've already spoken with dozens of Trump voters who are blaming Obama (excuse me: they're blaming "Barry HUSSEIN Obummer&quot for the consequences of Trump's actions, and they reject any proof or evidence to the contrary. In these interactions I am much more sympathetic than I am here, owing to the different format and venue, but it makes no difference. They aren't interested in my empathy or my understanding: they are certain of their beliefs, and anyone who challenges them is some kind of anti-American gay-loving Liberal snowflake.

Further, this is why Liberals lose: Conservatives pull every dirty trick they can manage in order to undermine and disenfranchise Liberals--all while those same Liberals are blithely taking the high road straight into irrelevance. Fuck that.


Look, you can keep on scolding me if it helps satisfy your sense of sanctimony. Your argument has been completely destroyed at least several times in this thread by at least several different DUers, and despite your calls for understanding, it's clear that you're much more interested in preaching than in understanding the views of your fellow Liberals.

[JCanete]

204. I'm not pretending. I clearly just dont' know what your position is. You denied that words intended

Last edited Thu Feb 23, 2017, 03:22 PM - Edit history (3)

to hurt were a form of violence, and then said "that's not what I'm saying." You denied that thinking of a swath of people fundamentally different--inferior to you-- has any dehumanizing aspect.


You don't have to see the world the way a trump voter sees the world to empathize with their humanity. Empathy could be "there but for the grace of God go I." The very suggestion in saying people ARE stupid, is that there is something intrinsically wrong with them. It is obfuscating the realities of ignorance and cultural impact. Besides that we want to have our cake and eat it too. We want them both to be stupid, and to fault them for their stupidity. That seems somewhat unreasonable, and I don't subscribe to either, but those two perspectives aren't exactly compatible.

It is also a psychologically unsound approach if you want to change people's minds, to put them mentally on the defensive like this. It is far more effective not to make them the bad guy, but to make the behavior the bad guy, and give them an out. Give them an opportunity to see that that shit is not actually in keeping with their values while giving them the room to distance themselves from it. How do you think someone coming up in the world and just starting to get a sense of it and his or her own values does with information that his or her parents, who he or she loves, is a horrible stupid racist asshole? My guess? He rejects you and your message before he even hears it.

There's nothing sanctimonious about saying certain language is violent. I understand why people would engage in it. I don't judge anybody for doing it, as bad or stupid people. I think they're wrong, just as you think I'm wrong. That's why we have discussions.But I don't think you or anybody is bad for engaging in perfectly human, mild by comparison behavior.

And yes, I have plenty to say about how ignorant I think these people are on reality itself. I'm not going to shout it in their face, but I'm certainly not going to pretend that their version of reality is just as valid as any. That doesn't mean that the way they got there doesn't make perfect sense, given their environment. It doesn't mean that the forces that impacted that evolution weren't in large part outside of them. I wonder if you truly believe had you been raised in one of these places, that you would have come out differently by virtue of your special DNA or better grey matter. I wonder if you realize that you are condemning people to stupidity, if you look at demographics, entirely by virtue of where they were born and raised. I feel like that should tell you something about how this happens.

What is your view that I'm not understanding? That it is offensive to have a world view where there aren't good and bad people, and stupid and smart people?. In my opinion thinking otherwise is its own kind of fundamentalism, often reduced down to "I know stupid people when I see them." I'm not comfortable with making assumptions simply because they gel with my world view, which is why, in spite of my family and relatives being republicans, and many of them being mormon, over time, my bad assumptions were challenged and I adjusted. People do and can change when they are given the opportunity. They aren't going to get that opportunity in their own communities. If we shut that door down, or lift the draw bridge higher than they are mentally prepared to jump , then they aren't going to get that opportunity from us either.


BTW I didn't say Trump supporters were marginalized. I said the opposite.

Anyway, you can have the last word on this, unless you have a specific question for me. I'lll come back and read it and let the thread die. Apparently I've been destroyed in thread after thread, and I take it that means this is about winning...so you can have your prize.

[Squinch]

177. I'm sorry, but these are people who voted in a madman and are likely to have

irrevocably damaged our nation. They ARE stupid. Really really really stupid.

Acknowledging that truth is not a lack of perspective. It is acknowledging a truth.

Acknowledging that truth is not violence and saying it is violence is absurd.

[JCanete]

178. What does stupid mean to you? You might have a very specific sense of its definition. It has a hell

of a lot of baggage, so it means all of it when you use the term.

Unless you believe that people are literally incapable of better behavior and thinking, then perhaps stupid isn't the word you're looking for. It doesn't mean the same thing as ignorant. Being so damn fucking steadfast about NEEDING these people to be either evil or stupid, does say a lot about us as people. Sadly, the reality, I'm sorry to burst your good-guy bad-guy narrative, is that people are people. Some people think horrible things, and do horrible things, and they do it all in the service of supporting their sense of what is good and right. It is the information that is feeding their sense of what is good and right that is where it all goes wrong. It is the ignorance and the culture that feeds it, and the media and the manipulation of schools that engineers it ...


And as I've said elsewhere, your read is not the Truth. That's the biggest problem I have with it. It is absolutely and willfully dismissive of how human beings actually function socially, and of how ignorance manifests and is reinforced. It suggests that if you had been born into the same household as any of these people, that you have some magical DNA or mental fortitude that would have allowed you to see through all of the bullshit. Can't you see how having a case of the stupid...being ignorant...is not the same thing as Being stupid?

And the reason this is such a big deal is that when we fuck up and misdiagnose these people we mis-prescribe. For that matter, we excuse the lazy notion that there is no disease to treat. We think of the people themselves as the virus. That is going to fail us.

[Squinch]

179. I am perfectly well aware of the meaning of the word stupid. And these people

have proven to us over and over for years and years that they are stupid, and now they have just topped all of their previous stupidities and we are all going to suffer at the hands of their stupidity.

Acknowledging that truth is not "doing horrible things in the service of supporting my sense of what is good and right." It is acknowledging a truth.

This isn't about "misdiagnosis" or "mis-prescribing." That's just perfectly ridiculous.

This is about acknowledging the truth of the stupidity of people who, year after year after year after year after year vote in a way that poses a grave danger to themselves and to me.

This isn't about "my read." This is about their dependable and consistent actions.

They're stupid. They're dumb as a box of hammers.

[JCanete]

180. oh, we aren't having a conversation. The closest thing you came to addressing in my post was that

something I said was "ridiculous." You ignored everything else entirely, and I suppose that makes maintaining your perspective easier. That's fine. Good luck with it.

[Squinch]

183. No. We haven't been having a conversation. You have been arguing

against the self-evident truth that the people who vote against their interests every time they are given the opportunity over many years are stupid.

And your ignoring of THAT point probably makes maintaining YOUR perspective easier.

Good luck with that.

[Orrex]

198. +10,000

[Lars39]

8. It's just a short jump to dehumanizing your fellow human beings.

And that never ends well.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

14. There is a difference...

There is a difference between disliking somebody because they are black, Jewish, Hispanic, Muslim, gay et cetera and disliking someone because they hate Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims and gays, et cetera.

[Lars39]

40. Definitely

[Zero System]

59. A huge difference.

I won't even go so far as to say I dislike the person - but when it becomes clear that they refuse to educate themselves outside of what they hear or read from their like-minded friends or media outlets, when they show unmitigated hatred toward other human beings - I will disengage, and that is because I dislike their entrenchment in ignorance, not because I dislike them as a fellow human being. I don't see it at all as dehumanizing them as a person. I simply realize that they cannot be reached at this point in their life, and my time is better spent on changing what I can.

[Initech]

53. No it doesn't.

I'm not going to abandon my conservative friends because they listen to Infowars, or watch Fox News. I will let my points of view be known in discussions, and I won't be afraid to admit that I am very liberal. I also listen to plenty of bands who have some right-leaning viewpoints but that doesn't detract my enjoyment. I won't let the fact that the Lego Batman Movie was produced by Steven Mnuchin detract from my enjoyment of it. If we resort to those things are we really better than the people we claim to hate? :??:

[DemocratSinceBirth]

95. "I won't let the fact that the Lego Batman Movie was produced by Steven Mnuchin detract from my..."

I won't let the fact that the Lego Batman Movie was produced by Steven Mnuchin detract from my enjoyment of it.

If you lived in Germany would you have patronized movies produced by Leni Riefenstahl ?

[Xipe Totec]

9. in software engineering it's called flipping the Bozo bit.

Or shorting to ground.

McCarthy's Rule #4 is "Don't Flip The Bozo Bit". McCarthy's advice was that everyone has something to contribute – it's easy and tempting, when someone ticks you off or is mistaken (or both), to simply disregard all their input in the future by setting the "bozo flag" to TRUE for that person. But by taking that lazy way out, you poison team interactions and cannot avail yourself of help from the "bozo" ever again

[DemocratSinceBirth]

12. What if some people really are Bozos and are incapable of helping?

I have no problem putting people like Steve Bannon outside the circle.

[KittyWampus]

31. Not all of them are "Steve Cannons". Auto-correct made it "cannons' LOLZ

[Xipe Totec]

60. Even a loose Bannon shoots in the right direction from time to time. nt

[DemocratSinceBirth]

77. Yeah, he might hit you or me.

[RadiationTherapy]

29. I hadn't heard this context before. Thank you for sharing.

And, I agree, it is lazy.

[KingCharlemagne]

13. So what's your red line? Obviously, racism and misogyny are not. How about

rounding people up for internment camps? Will you stop talking to your ideological rivals then?

[narnian60]

30. +1

[RadiationTherapy]

39. I am not certain where that line would be - the line where I decide others are so deviant they need

to be removed or re-educated or destroyed. For me at this time, I could not define it. From what I have learned and seen, it has been historically impossible to change ideologies through violence. One can oppress ideologies that way, but the only way to change how people think and believe is through dialogue and debate. Even now, nazi ideologies remain. Even now, confederate civil war ideologies remain. Violence cannot alleviate these beliefs.

[manicraven]

157. Violence doesn't alleviate beliefs but often neither does informing of facts, debate, or dialogue.

There is no reaching the core followers of DJT who salute his poster every day or stand outside armed with assault weapons or are solid members of the KKK. I may not personally hate the deplorables, but I won't engage with them any longer either. They're too hostile and belligerent. They refuse to consider anything that comes via the main stream media or "libruls" but instead believe in "fake" news, propaganda, and conspiracy theories. They are suspicious and extremely hateful. I admit that I've given up and just ignore them. They remind me of members of a cult who will not listen to anything, especially evidence-based information. I'm not going around and around in circles any longer as it's a waste of time. One study stated that it can take years to change a person's mind, and quite frankly, we don't have years! We need to mobilize and turn out in huge numbers and vote as many Republicans out of office as is humanly possible. We need to fight against GOP tactics to suppress the vote. That's how we change the game; not in engaging with people who think fascism is grand.

Not everyone who voted for DJT is what I would call a "deplorable" either. Those are people who voted to bring back jobs and renegotiate NAFTA. They disliked most of DJT's behavior and the GOP's policies, but were hoping DJT would stand up to the GOP and would also become a grownup once in office. Those people were naive, and they'll swing back on their own once the light bulb is fully turned on and their social safety net is attacked.

[Squinch]

103. Condescension and self congratulation doesn't seem to be off limits for them either.

[JTFrog]

181. Probably somewhere around Benghazi and private email servers.

But that's just a wild guess.

[DetlefK]

15. No, "stupid" is actually more than just an insult. It's a measure for a person's intelligence.

For example:
If you think that a billionaire who literally sits on a golden throne, who has never had dirt under his fingernails his whole life, who jumps from trophy-wife to trophy-wife, who brags about the benefits of his celebrity-status and exploits them for power-fantasies and sexual desires, who has never risked anything for others, is a blue-collar person who understands you, then you are stupid.

Stupid by any sensible, objective measure.

And I will not apologize for calling a stupid person stupid and for considering such a person's opinions of low value.

[RadiationTherapy]

32. Well, for me, you would have to go much further in order to even assert there is an objective

measure of intelligence or stupidity. Also, I don't believe there is any such thing as "common sense," so, again, I am not sure what use the word "stupid" plays here.

[SammyWinstonJack]

63. +1000000!

[Bettie]

81. Yes

Exactly right.

[BeckyDem]

16. I think they're stupid and I also would like to see that change. Don't you think they were ripe for

a Trump? Decades of listening to lies by Rush and Hannity, FBI Comey lies didn't help, did it? I don't know why they turned on their own religious values to vote for a cheater who abuses women. I don't know how to change their minds but I think he may do so much harm to this country, maybe they'll see it then. Infuriating to me how dumb they are, I can't deny I see them that way. It was so obvious he was a fraud.

[RadiationTherapy]

33. Yes, I do think they were ripe and susceptible to a bully who exploits their prejudices about

"the Others" and I would hate to see that happening here and to liberals. For me, it is easy to see the inverse happening.

[BeckyDem]

35. I think you're taking it too far. When have Democrats ever made a campaign

to slight the Republican voters integrity? The platform we have always used is policy, for the most part.

[RadiationTherapy]

42. Frankly, and perhaps my standards are ridiculous, but I saw some of that in this past presidential

campaign.

[BeckyDem]

46. Overall, that has not been our way as a party to campaign for votes.

If you're talking about the deplorable word, then was it not the Trump supporters who ignored all his words he used against women? This is why I have a difficult time understanding the people who voted for him. I doubt our party will ever resort to the depths of a Republican campaign, most of us would never tolerate it.

[Crunchy Frog]

146. They were ripe for a Trump.

If you haven't already, I would strongly urge you to view the film The Brainwashing of my Dad.

There is a major, deliberate, and well funded, VERY EFFECTIVE propaganda campaign that has been working on these people's minds for decades. Some of them can be, and have been "deprogrammed".

We're not working on an even intellectual playing field, but one that has been heavily distorted by a propaganda machine that prevents honest debate and discussion from even happening in our society.

The real enemies are the ones behind the scenes pulling the strings. I wish that we would focus our sites more on them.

[BeckyDem]

152. Never heard of it before. I looked at one review from the NYT and I am curious what you think

about this comment.
The film has an interesting segment on the neurology of the phenomenon — how alarm is addictive, how repetition of the same messages transforms the brain — but the subject is left underexplored. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/movies/the-brainwashing-of-my-dad-review.html?_r=0

My own take on part of the problem is the exploitation of racism, bigotry in all its forms by the Reagan revolution era. The Moral Majority was a tremendous gift to Reagan. They were happy to ignore all his corruption, all his de-regulations as long as they had tangible laws that reflected their bigotry and religious beliefs. I see that man as one of the worst presidents in my life time.

[Crunchy Frog]

163. I think the stuff about neurophysiology is somewhat tangential to the main point of the film.

An interesting subject, but needs a good deal more research.

I would strongly advise viewing the actual film. The main focus of the film is the story of the filmmaker's father. He was a kind, mild mannered, lifelong Democrat who suddenly became transformed into a completely different person. The only difference in his life was a change in his routine, where he now had a long commute, alone in his car. He literally was brainwashed through exposure to RW talk radio, and other propaganda outlets.

It was a really fascinating story. He gets "deprogrammed" in the end, as he is gradually cut off from his sources of RW propaganda, and family members deliberately begin replacing some of it with liberal sources. He goes back to being mild mannered, and even ends up voting for Obama. I'm guessing that susceptible people like that are lacking in some sort of internal filter, as he seems to take on the viewpoint of whatever he's exposed to, without applying much critical thinking.

I only just discovered the film, but I've seen reviews where other people talk about similar things happening in their own families. I would bet that lots of people are vulnerable because they lack critical thinking faculties, rather than that they're closet bigots.

They show footage of him during his brainwashed phase, and you can see him seething with anger, as is encouraged by RW talk radio. This is the context in which there is discussion about anger actually being addictive. Apparently it actually triggers the release of endorphins.

Again, I would urge you to actually watch the movie. You can't get a really good idea of it just from descriptions or reviews. I feel like it's an important piece of a very large and complicated puzzle. I believe that a large percentage of this country's population is literally under the spell of a cult, and that this is the product of a very intentional, deliberate process. This is what the Koch brothers and others like them have been funding with their billions over the past few decades.

[BeckyDem]

185. I would like to view it myself. I think you would agree there is no one decisive

reason why people believe the political propaganda they swear by. It seems to me Democrats-liberals are open to being critical of what they read but no one is immune to manipulation especially when media omits information. Reliable sources do not always remain reliable, and reputations change, and some newspapers are not wrong all the time, but much of the time so we must all be questioning what we read and ultimately accept as truth.

When you look at the consolidation of media ownership, where other voices are severely limited, the licensing of radio and tv news we have now is not healthy for a democracy. Trump would not be possible in my view if not for decades of hate radio and Fox News. I try and remind myself that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 3 million. The EC, although won by Trump, the protests against him since he took office tell me our country is not welcoming of the fraud con man who ran the most cynical campaign I have ever witnessed. His entire family with the exception of his young son are con artists, all for personal financial gain while giving cover to a white supremacist agenda. The corruption to come is horrifying. It was so blatant and obvious the roles they all play in this charade of him being an outsider, its shocking anyone voted for him who needed help for themselves or their children. Most Americans are offended by bigotry in all forms, and our voices are getting louder with each passing day. But to your point, it is wise to examine how people form their opinions and how people can change. I am all for that but I am not for seeing the Democratic Party pandering to bigots by advancing any legislation that undercuts the rights of others, on banning immigrants to abortion to name two, in order to get them to vote with us. Thanks for the heads up on the film, very interesting subject, especially now.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

17. These people are darlings. We should put them on our holiay card list

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028686985

[LAS14]

19. Thanks for this.

We don't need to spend a lot of time posting defenses of Trump voters, and DU can be a place for venting. But in the long run we have to understand the opposition in order to beat them. Lumping them all together isn't a path toward understanding. I mean "understanding" in the coldest, most intellectual sense. Not in the sympathy sense.

I peek at Breitbart, etc., now and again.

One thing that gave me a new blick on the Trump supporter phenomenon was a man interviewed on TV who was so clearly scared to death of terrorists. He was frantic to keep "them" out of the country. Not Muslims, terrorists. I have no reason to think he was Islamaphobic or anything else. Ignorant, yes. But in the sense of having his fears flood over his thinking. There may be ways to approach this. I think we'd benefit if we could come up with some plans.

[RadiationTherapy]

34. Exactly. And to be clear, I would not waste any time defending Trump voters.

My main point is that once we stop thinking and take the lazy way out through insults, communication is effectively over. I believe that where communication ends, violence begins. I wish to be as anti-violence as possible for as long as possible.

[ms liberty]

147. Well said. n/t

[ismnotwasm]

22. Oh no. For instance I think about the crazy, degenerate assholes at JPR from time to time

And in my profession, I interact With Trumpflakes quite often. Stupidity is a predominant charectoristic as is bigotry. I still provide excellent care, nor do I attempt to change minds. The are human beings--no matter how misled

[RadiationTherapy]

36. Thank you for your care to everyone regardless of ideology.

While I personally don't know a working definition of "stupid" as regards a permanent state for an individual or group, I will concede - like Forrest Gump's mom - that there are stupid behaviors and stupid beliefs and stupid ideas. For me, the notion of permanence is most worrying.

[nikibatts]

23. That is simply a stupid statement and not true.

[LanternWaste]

24. How very authoritarian and unimpressive to call a bigot a bigot.

How very authoritarian and unimpressive to call a bigot a bigot. How dearly it lacks empathy to observe as much.

[RadiationTherapy]

44. I don't think I said anything of the kind. A bigot is a definable trait, "stupidity" is not.

I have no problem using the word "bigot" when appropriate.

[Locrian]

25. great post

With climate change, population, nukes, etc - we as a species had better find a way to work together or we're just not going to make it. There is nothing productive about dismissing a large part of the population - it only furthers the divide and they wind up "winning" more people over to hate.

I also think that it's mistaking the puppets for the puppet masters.... which are not just trump / gop but the entire system of extraction economics... but that's a different subject.

[RadiationTherapy]

45. Excellent points. The global perspective makes the problem exponentially more incendiary.

[Iggo]

26. Bullshit. I think about them all the time.

I get what you're saying, but I think maybe you need to change "you" to "I" in your headline.

[RadiationTherapy]

37. Fair enough. I am often challenged by when to use "I" "You" "One" "We" etc.

[Iggo]

54. I do that with the things I have time to check, and it helps me a lot.

Another thing I've been trying out is seeing if "and" works better than "but."

Like I said, it's just a thing I'm trying...

[NCTraveler]

27. You have linked things that cannot be linked.

A true fallacy.

[RadiationTherapy]

38. Thanks for the heads up.

[JustAnotherGen]

41. I'm okay with being called an authoritarian and a fascist

Because I don't care if people who hate me because the color of my skin and my husband for being both an immigrant and a white man who is a 'race traitor' - sffer, go without, fall behind.

They wouldn't care if it was me - they would laugh, demean, slur, etc. etc.

I don't do that - I just disregard.

[RadiationTherapy]

43. Yes. I understand as best I can - I do not have the same issues as you, obviously.

However, historically, things get very dangerous when members of a population care nothing about what happens to others because they "deserve" it or have "brought it on themselves." Both/all sides of a population can fall into a spiral of violence that way. For me, I am still trying to avoid that violence.

[JustAnotherGen]

165. In the USA

Things get dangerous for brown, black, Asian, Native People when we give an inch.

Think Rosewood, Tulsa, Trail of Tears, Japanese Internment Camps, J.C. etc etc

They dehumanize and demonize us every chance they get. Turn about is fair play.

They are being warned.

Their predecessors have inflicted violence against us that has been government sanctioned.

They did this to themselves. We have no history of entire towns/cities of white folks being wiped out by black Americans with Fed Gov approval.

They might very well have wiped themselves out. In dark places on the web - a conversation is taking place in NJ. Only 300K New Jerseyans who are black take Medicaid. We can help our own. It's doable. We've been here before.

We know how to survive with less. Do they? It's their own fault.

[TeacherB87]

47. You're totally right.

I wish more people on the left realized this!

[Progressive dog]

48. The orange blob is a narcissistic psychopath

I don't care whether he is stupid or not, he is dangerous and not persuadable.

[On the Road]

49. IMO, the Democratic Party is Starting to Enter Dangerous Territory

and embrace third-party thinking as the only legitimate political response. Knee-jerk protests and constant mockery make the party look small and resentful. They also ignore the underlying reasons for the civil rights movement's original success. MLK appealed to people's humanity and looked forward to a 'beloved society' based on Christian love.

The prancing hard-core conservatives are a distraction. Their votes are not in doubt. The critical voters are those who switched from Obama to Trump. Lumping them in with the worst of Trump supporters is not only insulting and makes it more likely for that switch to become permanent.

Most important thing now is for the party to regain stature and resemble an opposing party that's ready to lead the country. Critical to that is by embodying the values it is supposed to be based on.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

50. Res ipsa loquitur

The critical voters are those who switched from Obama to Trump.

In terms of thinking about this white working-class obsession that has possessed too many Democrats, how do you reach those voters? Is it just a fool’s errand?

This is the most ridiculous thing ever. There are not millions upon millions of Trump-Obama voters. This is a story that is in search of factual evidence.

http://www.salon.com/2017/02/20/obama-pollster-cornell-belcher-on-the-failures-that-led-to-president-trump-what-happens-to-a-centrist-democrat-who-cant-hold-the-obama-coalition/

[geek tragedy]

70. there's no penalty in American politics if one "looks small and resentful" and there's zero reason

to believe the Trumpers are susceptible to an appeal to their humanity. They voted for a thoroughly indecent, small, resentful man precisely because he was thoroughly resentful, indecent man whose small-mindedness and meanness counts as authenticity in their outlook.

The best we can do is to demoralize them to the point they give up on voting. We do that by grinding Trump via constant opposition and defeating all of his priorities to the extent possible, and to give him only the bare minimum success at accomplishing goals that benefit the typical Trump voter.

They voted for authoritarian populism, e.g. fascism, and we're better off they stay on the sidelines as they're not disposed to treating the obligations of citizenship with the respect they deserve.

[njhoneybadger]

51. Your premise is false.

I'm perplexed that you don't see the irony

[Maru Kitteh]

65. It's also true that the greater majority of those objecting to calling racists, racists -

Nazis, Nazis and misogynists, misogynists are usually racists, Nazis and misogynists themselves. Words matter.

These phenomena are growing, and they are driven by and comprised of people who are in fact racists, *neo-Nazis and misogynists; and this is very much an issue, worthy of discussion.

[Maru Kitteh]

74. I agree with your observations and the sentiments you express with much of this post.

"I see people who claim to be against racial prejudice and gender based prejudice actually displaying racial and gender based prejudices while their peers cheer them on."

We have all seen that, I'm sure. I agree with you.

We have also seen too many instances online, IRL and from our elected officials and their spokespersons crying that if we call them on their racism and misogyny we are trying to "silence" them or shut the conversation down with "labels" or we are just being to "sensitive" and politically correct. They do this because they do not want to talk about racism, they do not want to talk about misogyny, they do not want to talk about the rise of Nazism and fascism (Twitter is an absolute sewer of self-identified fascists and Nazis) in this country.

Jan Brewer is on my TeeVee right now, screaming "Criminal Illegal ALIENS!" as many times as she possibly can and crying about being called a racist and a bigot just because she is characterizing an entire sub-set of not-white immigrants as being dangerous, violent, lazy, diseased people. . . . . I know right? The poor dear.

There have been logical fallacies as long as there have been arguments. Some people will always go from 0 to 60 in .05 without bothering to examine their own behavior. It is good to point out inconsistency and hyperbole.

I agree it does make the conversation more challenging, but I must disagree that it renders such endeavors futile.

[Maru Kitteh]

91. Jan Brewer is the former Crypt Keeper, I mean Governor of Arizona.

Creative Google searches will find you a host of links to enjoy to your heart's content.

[DesertRat]

99. Former Gov. Brewer is a Trump supporter and a birther

She's also remembered for rudely wagging her finger in President Obama's face on the tarmac during one of his visits to AZ.

[Maru Kitteh]

106. I don't have a link to my living room and why on *Earth* would I consider

"editing my statement" to please you?

She has an extensive record that we who have been watching her bullshit are all familiar with. Jan Brewer is a vile fucking racist asshole.

You may choose to defend her and die upon that rock if you wish. I'm not here to provide your education.

[Maeve]

123. You are changing the terms

The original line was "Characterizes an entire sub-set of not-white immigrants as being dangerous, violent, lazy, diseased people." You change it to "she thinks all non-white immigrants".

Sub-set does not equal all. To say the first line means the same as the second is either sloppy or dishonest.

[WomanWhoRoars]

56. Greta's FB page

Since Greta has moved from Fox to MSNBC, I decided to support her and "LIKE" her FB page. I made a huge mistake of commenting on one of her posts. People of DU, I am telling you that there is a percentage of Trumpsters that are crazy. They are full of rage and bitterness. I mean....they won!!! Why all the bitterness!! They do not trust the press at all and believe everything Don tells them. Honestly, it's like a cult. They sort of remind me of Jehovah's Witnesses in their narrow beliefs. No offense intended.

[njhoneybadger]

57. There is something seriously wrong with this thread

[jalan48]

58. Calling people deplorables is unlikely to raise their awareness of the current political situation.

It's polarizing, that's it.

[mattclearing]

62. Your post doesn't make sense.

The only person saying stupid people aren't human is you.

And clearly, we aren't relieved from thinking about stupid people, as pondering the motives of stupid people is the #1 activity on DU.

[JCanete]

76. There are people who think certain races are stupid humans. Do you think that isn't dehumanizing? nt

[mattclearing]

164. off-topic nt

[Blue_Tires]

64. For starters, I have nothing in common with that crowd...

Secondly, I'm *REALLY* starting to resent always having to be the one to 'engage' and 'dialogue' with that bunch to understand their side of the story or whatever when as a Black American they have never, ever, ever given me the same courtesy in my lifetime... The most recent golden opportunity was during BlackLivesMatter, and we already know how the deplorables treated that...

So I'm cutting that group off completely. Not going to listen idly and nod quietly while they drone on about Obama being a Muslim who created ISIS, Soros rigging elections and climate change research, Sandy Hook being a false flag hoax so Obama could grab guns, Mexicans stealing their nonexistent jobs, Hillary being a ballstomping dominatrix, BLM being a terrorist group, etc... If the deplorables seek real dialogue with an open mind then they know where to find me -- From now on they're meeting me on my level; I'm not descending myself to theirs...

[Quayblue]

66. +1000

[JCanete]

78. You can resent it all you want. What works is what matters. Saying you're not going to sit and nod

is totally unrelated to what this OP is talking about. Nobody thinks you should do that. If you don't want to engage, that's fine. It's not going to help us, but it's fine. If you want to sling shit back because it makes you feel good, that is only going to make it harder to bridge this divide. If you engage in this sort of behavior, you are in fact, descending yourself to their level.

[Blue_Tires]

89. I'm not slinging shit back this time

like I said, I'm just cutting them off completely.

I've gotten caught up in this little game every two years since 2000... Before Trump it was the Teabaggers I had to reach out to and try to understand, and before then it was the gunners, the values voters, the evangelicals, the social conservatives, the dreaded "independents", etc. Bend over backwards to tell them the benefits of voting Dem yet they'll *always* find a reason to stay with the GOP... Sorry I'm not going to kowtow to extremist views or validate their hatred against whichever demographic they're scapegoating for the election season...

The onus is ON THEM to make a good faith gesture to re-open the lines of dialogue, not me... And I've run out of patience trying to explain the rational to the irrational.

[JCanete]

115. Like I said, deciding to opt out of that work is entirely understandable. Also, again, nobody here

is suggesting that we or you cowtow to anything

[NastyRiffraff]

67. Sorry, I'm all out of empathy with these people.

They really ARE stupid and deplorable. Thanks to them, we have a racist, misogynist, xenophobic monster in the White House. Anyone who voted for him, or who voted third party to make a "statement" is by definition stupid, whether they're rich or poor, male or female, educated or not.

I refuse to engage with them, and I'll call them stupid because they are.

[NurseJackie]

72. Yes. Stupid and Deplorable ... exactly correct. There are no two ways about it.

[ismnotwasm]

84. I watched two live casts today--full of deplorables

They had set out to troll, and say some of the most bigoted, ignorant shit.

I do not have to give bigotry a chance.

[NurseJackie]

90. "Giving them a chance" and "Trying to understand" is a SIGN OF WEAKNESS!!!

They'll abuse whatever courtesies are extended to them, and they'll exploit any weakness they detect.

Fuck that!

[ismnotwasm]

94. Yeah one woman went on a demented rant toward me

Because the mayor of Seattle was laying out a very complete liberal plan for our city--and in the comments she was saying "no immigrants" and what about Veterans?" So I asked her what she had done for vets. Pissed her off. She said something about selling her house in Indiana for her ex-military kids, while I sit in my "safe space" and let America turn into a Muslim country. I kid you not.

Well. I couldn't let it go, not entirely so I told her to take her meds among other things. Such a bigoted, deluded self-absorbed person.

[geek tragedy]

69. to each their own.

there are some persuadeable Trump voters, but a good 90% of them have radically different values from us, and that values gap simply can't be spanned.

Really no point trying to debate them, our goal should be to try to demoralize them so they stop voting.

[JCanete]

82. and how would you do that? Even if your diagnosis of who can change and who cannot is wrong, I'm all

for a strategy that actually works, shaky fundamentals or no.. How do you think you are going to demoralize them? All you're going to do is to reinforce the notion that we are mortal enemies. That builds fervor, it doesn't quell it. It gives people a reason to fight in the name of a nationalistic good-versus--evil narrative of bullshit...and sadly, to some degree, this works on both sides. It makes rational thought harder. It obscures realities in favor of platitudes and group-think. You think that somehow, feeding that beast on our side and theirs is going to fix this?

[geek tragedy]

85. step one is to make Trump fail as much as we can. on everything.

step two is to reinforce the narrative that he's a failure and that he's betrayed them

step three is to reinforce that things will not get better as long as he's president.

step four is to make them feel as shitty about America as we do right now, except they're not as pissed off

[TNLib]

73. I believe it leads to distancing and ignoring

Believing someone is stupid doesn't lead to violence it leads you to completely dismissing them. Which personally I have no problem with.

I will agree it's not great for the country as whole though, if we are completely dismissing 40% of the population.

[JCanete]

80. That's about right. People can choose to do what they want to, but being aware of what

is and is not the reality, and what is and is not a positive contribution to a kinder and more sibling-like society, is particularly important if one actually wants the world to be a better place.

[JCanete]

75. yep, great post! And when you diagnose a people as this "other" you make yourself blind to the

actual forces at work, and you cannot effectively combat them, because you are without a doubt, going to prescribe the wrong medicine for an entirely different disease.

People are in fact people. They do operate on basically the same principles. When we use words to dehumanize other human beings, even if they themselves are doing the same thing...we are losing some of our own humanity by way of shutting down our own empathy.

If we don't have that empathy, we cannot talk to these people, for the very fact that we have stopped seeing them as people.

[bravenak]

111. Oh bullshit!!

[JCanete]

113. wow, that was super insightful, thanks for chiming in. Changed my mind! what the hell Brav

[bravenak]

114. I'm mad at you for agreeing with this. :(

[JCanete]

116. But you aren't helping me see where I'm wrong. nt

[bravenak]

124. Fine.

I do not appreciate people who are supposed to be on my side telling me that I am DEHUMANIZING people who actually never saw me as human in the first place. With people who voted to deport my family members; my grandad was not legal and was deported by the USA leaving my grandma, who also had no papers but was born here, alone to raise ten fucking kids ALONE.
To sympatize with folks who have no sympathy for little dark folks like me, and tell me I'm dehumanizing them by calling them STUPID, is to tell me that they are more valuable than I am. These posts imploring understanding should go to them, not to us.
To me, it is basically saying I need to sympathize with my would be oppressors and try to change their minds and to NOT piss them off by calling them like I see them.
If folks spent more time shaming deplorables over the years, rather than shaming us for calling them out, we may have gotten somewhere by now. It is also hurtful to know that my allies care more about the feeling of white folks who want to deport me, than for me who is in actual danger.
They want us to not call stupid stupid, racist racist, and sexists sexist, all in order to try to be 'better' than they are. Same folks would tell abolitionists to be kinder to slavers and realize they are human too, as they beat the dog shit out of me. And tell me not to call them 'stupid' because tgat provojes them. Not cool. Either be on my side or be on theirs. Stop trying to have it both ways is what I want to say to the op.

[mcar]

186. +1000!

[JI7]

87. i love how these lectures are never for the right wing bigots

We aren't the ones who want top take away their healthcare do you stop with the bs about not thinking of them.

[KittyWampus]

93. Like there's really a shortage of lectures for the right wing bigots on DU. LOLZ

This thread went exactly the way I knew it would.

[treestar]

173. Yeah why is that?

They are the ones doing the "other" thing.

[JI7]

88. the ones cheering on the muslim ban and deportations are the victims

What a fucking joke

[Phentex]

92. lots of concern lately...

for the feelings and labels and empathy for the TRUMP supporters. I believe in helping everyone, including them, but that doesn't mean I don't think they are disgusting and stupid. When they vote against their own best interests and the interests of a nation as a whole, they can't be very bright.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

96. Are we supposed to have empathy for this lovely fellow?

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a53275/trump-melbourne-florida-rally/


I believe I will reserve my empathy for his victim.

[JI7]

98. i think we are supposed to blame Clinton for signing NAFTA

[DemocratSinceBirth]

105. NAFTA made the Deplorable threaten to sodomize a woman in a hijab ?

[JHan]

97. Calling a view stupid is not the problem..

and some people are indeed deplorable, by any metric. They may not *only* be deplorable but it is certainly a subset of their character.

... What is the right way, in your eyes, to describe these people:

-people whose rationale is driven by bigotry and racism.

-people who believe immigrants make them unsafe - no matter how much evidence they're presented with to show their fear is irrational.

-people who believe a woman should be punished for having an abortion.

-people who believe America should be a christian theocracy.

-people who are only interested in making money for themselves, and don't care how negatively policies impact others.

Empathizing with Trump voters who knowingly voted for fear, intolerance and bigotry is dangerous because racism and bigotry are based on hate. We don't help ourselves, others or even them, by not speaking Truth to power and calling out the ugliness for what it is...

[RadiationTherapy]

159. My opinion of engaging those ideologies is by calling them out as racists, bigots, sexists, etc.

As I see it, those terms all have reasonably objective definitions that can be applied. For instance, I can explain how most abortion laws are actually morality laws against women's sexuality. A Trump voter may not agree - they may not even understand - but it is a rational process. I can do the same with racist behavior, environmental degradation, crimes against queer, trans, and other disempowered groups - but I cannot explain why someone is stupid. For me, the word has no objective, baseline meaning. I think it is really serving as a label of "less-human-than-I-am" and gives the user permission to disregard the humanity of their ideological rivals.

Again, I think calling out bigotry, racism, hate crimes, anti-semitism, etc, is absolutely critical to the struggle because they are demonstrable definitionally. However, "stupid" "deplorable" "degenerate" and so on are subjective words that I do not think have very wide spread definitions in common.

[NanceGreggs]

100. The natural response ...

… to recognizing someone is stupid is to dismiss them as not worth engaging with. How you go from that to “engaging in hate, violence, exacting revenge, or whatever reprisals please you” is beyond me.

I know some truly stupid people. They believe that all blacks are lazy, all Muslims want to kill them, all illegals are living large on welfare, etc. Do I hate these people, or wish them ill? Of course not. I simply avoid engaging in discussion with them beyond commenting on the weather, or how their kids are doing. I don’t form friendships with them, or socialize with them.

And I certainly don’t try to “persuade” them away from their outlandish beliefs, because it’s a waste of my time. They are only capable of regurgitating what they’ve heard from FOX-News or Rush Limbaugh, and will argue to the grave that those are the real “facts” that the liberals are trying to cover up.

Implying that recognizing someone’s stupidity leads to “hate, violence, revenge or reprisals” is utterly ludicrous. On the contrary; I think most people feel sorry for those who, being trapped by their own stupidity, live in constant fear and paranoia because they can’t think outside the boundaries of their own closed minds.

Life is sometimes like a message board. You can choose to engage, or you can use the Ignore feature. And harbouring hatred, or a desire for violence or revenge has nothing to do with choosing the latter option.

[NastyRiffraff]

112. Exactly right, Nance, especially the last paragraph:

Life is sometimes like a message board. You can choose to engage, or you can use the Ignore feature. And harbouring hatred, or a desire for violence or revenge has nothing to do with choosing the latter option.

I know some of these people, and I refuse to engage with them. I don't hate them, but they make me sick and frustrated; why would I want to put myself through that, with absolutely no benefit for doing so? They're NOT going to change just because I tried to "understand" them so it's a waste of my time and bad for my health.

[Squinch]

102. Kay. You go ahead and think act and engage with them. Have fun with that.

[bravenak]

104. So should we black people just ignore the racism and othering they do to us?

I really want to know how people who cry foul at the idea of calling deplorables deplorable would feel about hearing their so called 'allies' whine about how the very same folks who have no probs with them calling me a nigger to my face, are being 'otherized' by mean old liberals.
I fucking hate this shit. No matter what happens in this world, we blacks always know damn well that our so called allies will have more fucking sympathy for deplorables who vote for racist sexist antisemites, than they have for us. Those fuckers who voted to deport my family are somehow more fucking in need of sympathy than we who are in ACTUAL FUCKING DANGER from Trumpers and their racist policies.
I would delete this shit.

[JHan]

107. Tone police yourself among people who wish you harm - yeah that's the ticket...

[bravenak]

108. It's fucking ignorant and I see now how easy it is to sell us out

[JCanete]

121. It isn't about whether their behavior is unacceptable. It isn't about trying to get you to accept

that behavior, and we should all be fighting back against it.

Thinking of people as stupid is actually not helpful. We lose the plot when we do that. Calling them stupid is also not helpful. This only feeds the beast. It won't get us anywhere.

Stupid is not the same as ignorant. Willful ignorance by the way, is not an outright choice, it is still a condition of certain ignorance. You know, because we've talked about it, that there is a socialization of that ignorance. There is engineering going on, even if it is also self perpetuating. Your solution apparently is to feed into the forces that help it to self perpetuate.


Why would you delete a thread that simply says it is not a good practice to fall into the same trap that the people we are struggling against have fallen into? That is a trap that is set for us. Why do anyone that favor?

[bravenak]

128. Why should a black woman like me not think it is STUPID to vote for a guy who thinks I'm lazy?

I have been working my black ass off since I was babysitting at ten, fast fooding at 15, and burying my own child at 23. I have been through shit, to hell and back. I do not need a lecture from on high by a white person on how I should think about racist ass fuckwads who would put my ass on a plantation.
I would delete this shut because it is insensitive to MY OWN DAMN ALLIES.

[JCanete]

134. For the same reason that person shouldn't think a black person who doesn't have a job is lazy.

Because it isn't true. Because failing to see the truth of the matter is going to make it harder to fix. That's fine for the racist who wants to justify why he has a nice roof over his head and people of color are suffering. it gives him everything he needs. It makes him feel secure in his world-view as a good and productive human, and it allows him to keep his material wealth without feeling bad about it. At least in the temporary, that racist is winning.

If we want to fix these things, then it is not fine. It isn't mindful of the roots of racism and ignorance or anything at all. You tell me how getting it wrong about how people think and how their minds are changed is effective for anything practical?

[bravenak]

137. Thinking all blacks are lazy IS STUPID

And mean. And hurtful. And it keeps racism going for generations. It is a label we have been having applied to us even as we were picking a thousand pounds of cotton a day while our masters were sipping mint juleps.

The friend of my enemy is my enemy. I want them to be shamed out of existance. Because sitting around teloing us to play nice while they burn us and depirt us snd lynch us only helps them. It might make you feel great! But you hurt your own allies by trying to lure them with pat phrases and loads of understanding and sympathy. I would never ask a person to try to be more understanding of their rapist or Slavemaster. You need to be lecturing the deplorables. They might make it so I will be arrested for my blackness soon, while you tell me t chill and understand them.

[JCanete]

138. but it won't work. WE don't have the numbers to shame them out of existence. They have bubbles they

can survive in and a whole machine keeping that bubble alive and growing, and when that bubble finally bursts because of a demographic shift, there will be new bubbles that give us reasons to hate each other.


Here's a question, is or is not knowledge power? Why would you try to engage in this fight and not want to understand your enemy? Being wrong about how to think about them is not going to help us win. If it helps psychologically on some level, I get that, but we're going to lose this war.

[bravenak]

139. They barely beat us electorally and did not beat us popularly

We will have the numbers. Those who did not vote but lean Dem will be back on our side next time. I understand my enemy better than white folks do, y'll the ones who think these fokks are reachable. We know better and are trying to tell you.

[JCanete]

140. As a white folk who used to be a dumbass, or far more dumbass than I am now if you like, I disagree

from experience that people should be considered unreachable. As a white folk who knows other white folk with a long road to go, I've seen their minds change.

[bravenak]

141. Take too long and it too shame inducing for black folks to have to deal with

Tired of trying to convince racists I'm human

[JCanete]

144. Understood. Had another post going before reading this, but I think that even if people who don't

have any more bandwidth to keep fighting this tide, those white folks like myself, in my opinion, can't do our jobs to help change things if we ourselves approach other white people with a sense that they are scum or stupid. This OP was for all of us. I agree, it is not fair for us to demand of people who have suffered, that they continue to bear that burden, or that they rise above it all, even with all that weight and be the better people. That doesn't change the fact that the rest of us who can afford to need to do so.

[bravenak]

145. Ok. I feel you. And yes, I do think it's your job. I'm tired.

[JCanete]

148. ...and as an addendum, I don't know how to reconcile that with not making you feel sold out. That

is tricky territory and not everyone is going to be satisfied. My girlfriend is black, and very active in LGBQT rights of people of color, and she tells me all the time, she's got nothing else to give and she's just tired fighting that fight...there's just too much threat and pain that comes from people around you not seeing your humanity, but that we, the white allies, need to be out there doing that work, eroding that racism.

I've managed to reconcile my perspective with her at least, but I see that it is complicated.

[bravenak]

150. Thank you. I appreciate this post. Thank you for understanding.

[RadiationTherapy]

122. I am a communication scholar commenting on the act of communicating.

I am also stating that when communication effectively ends, violence begins. I am still anti-violence at the moment, but I realize not everyone is.

In any case, I don't intend to tell people what they should or shouldn't do - that's obviously futile and authoritarian - but I was trying to describe a process. I don't think I was advocating sympathy for Trump supporters, racists, bigots, or hatred of any kind.

Sorry for the long delay. I am recovering from a minor medical procedure.

[bravenak]

126. Then give these lectures to those who promote hateful policies.

We are not the ones promoting violence. I am a history scholar. We know the hostory of these types of movements and that they use propaganda and ignorance to grow their destatible and STUPID movement.

Tell me how you would feel if you were a black hispanic with a Muslim name being told not to DEHUMANIZE those who want YOU HARMED. Think about what you are communicating here. Think about your audience. Think intersectionally and use that to communicate or just keep quiet. Words hurt. I was very angry and hurt to see my allies trying to drum up sympathy for my oppressors.

[JCanete]

142. The problem with this argument is that you dont' even think those people are reachable.

I grant to you, that work is herculean. The reason this conversation makes sense here, is that we already care about facts and science on this side. We can listen and hear each other, or should be able to.

If we can't stay above the lure of hatred on this side, no matter how mildly it starts--and I understand why its so much more unfair to ask of so many of us given the actual trauma caused by the other--then I think we are truly screwed. We are not going to reach people and we are going to remain hopelessly locked in a struggle with those suckers. But it has never been fair has it. Sadly fair isn't at issue. Effectiveness is. The only way that stops being worth repeating is if you say "screw effectiveness, I want war."

All I'll be able to say to that is that I get it.

[bravenak]

143. Too much work to reach them

Easier to convince non voters who feel screwed by Trump to vote against them than to convince them they are wrong. By going after the deplorable vote, it gets folks like me who follow politics to be super disgusted and feel sold out. Why make our own people feel sold out or shamed so we can try for deplorables? Makes no sense. We will lose more votes than we gain.

[RadiationTherapy]

149. To be clear, I am not advocating "reaching them" or anything of the sort.

I speak for myself in the second paragraph about talking, engaging, etc, but, it doesn't mean that I am trying to "understand them." Peaceful protests are engaging, for instance. For me, it is about defending my own psyche from falling towards authoritarianism and fascism. I do not want to be that way despite the fact that conservatives are actually behaving that way toward several groups.

[bravenak]

151. I get it, but....

No. I just can't. Too black, too tired, and been doing this too long. Hard to engage with folks who have no empathy for others

[RadiationTherapy]

154. It is hard.

I hope liberals and intersectional thinking can gain more ground soon and I hope you are well.

[bravenak]

156. Thank you. I hope you are too and we win without losing our minds

[bravenak]

109. I bet you dont ever bother to answer my post

Great thing having sympathy for folks who want to stop and frisk my black ass than for me.

[Maru Kitteh]

117. I bet you're right, because it all really does seem always to come back to the same damn thing

over and over again. Racists who get their fee-fees hurt when they get called racists. Misogynists who get their little fee-fees hurt when they get called out for being misogynists. - And we're supposed to try to "understand" them.

I have no desire to hold the hands of a bunch of whiny-assed little white man-children while they cry about not being able to call women bitches, call minorities everything and how their boss is violatin' their free speech because they made them take the III%/Confederate flag off their locker.

F&ck that shit.

[bravenak]

119. You are muthafuckin right about this

Done with this bullshit ass sympathy with the plantation massa bullshit

[WinkyDink]

120. I like the way you think, Maru Kitteh!

[Maru Kitteh]

136. Deplorables and their apologists are the biggest safe-space, delicate, precious snowflakes

on the planet. They're all in full meltdown mode because they can't do and say whatever they want to whoever they like whenever they feel like it without accidentally stumbling into the occasional actual consequence. The poor dears!

[RadiationTherapy]

160. Just to be clear about how I feel about racism, sexism, etc. - I copy/pasted response 159 below.

"My opinion of engaging those ideologies is by calling them out as racists, bigots, sexists, etc.

As I see it, those terms all have reasonably objective definitions that can be applied. For instance, I can explain how most abortion laws are actually morality laws against women's sexuality. A Trump voter may not agree - they may not even understand - but it is a rational process. I can do the same with racist behavior, environmental degradation, crimes against queer, trans, and other disempowered groups - but I cannot explain why someone is stupid. For me, the word has no objective, baseline meaning. I think it is really serving as a label of "less-human-than-I-am" and gives the user permission to disregard the humanity of their ideological rivals.

Again, I think calling out bigotry, racism, hate crimes, anti-semitism, etc, is absolutely critical to the struggle because they are demonstrable definitionally. However, "stupid" "deplorable" "degenerate" and so on are subjective words that I do not think have very wide spread definitions in common."

I am not at all advocating what you are describing. I am not talking about people's feelings being hurt. I am not talking about leaving racism, sexism, and violence against the less powerful unchallenged and unlabelled. I am stating that terms like "stupid" and so on are not widely definable and serve only to galvanize and dehumanize one's ideological rivals.

[LAS14]

190. There's "understand" and "understand."

The OP was advocating being smart, not being sympathetic. If we don't understand our enemy in the most thorough way possible, we can't fight them effectively.

[KittyWampus]

127. No where in the OP did it say to sympathize for those folks. And that wasn't the intent.

[bravenak]

130. It sure did judge the fuck out of us who think that deplorables are stupid as fuck

And some of us will get hurt far far far worse than you will and the op will, but we better not call our oppressors stupid!!!

[WinkyDink]

118. I'm not in favor of eschewing labels for voting blocs. They self-identified.

[RadiationTherapy]

125. Sorry for my absence. I am recovering from a minor procedure today.

I will return when I can.

My intent with the OP was to explain a process and my opinion in relation to it. I hope it is not so clumsily worded as to imply I am asking people to do or not do a thing. I am not really into authoritarian "should-bodies" and I would hate to be taken that way.

[MrScorpio]

129. I'm sorry, but I seem to be all out fucks to give about Deplorables

I have no plans to visit the Fuck Store to buy a fresh supply.

Those racist morons are just going to have to do without it seems.

FDT.

[Crunchy Frog]

131. I agree.

The labeling and hating and othering (good word) feels really good and satisfying, but I don't see where it serves any constructive purpose at all, and I think is very counterproductive.

I haven't read the thread yet, but I'm guessing this view isn't very popular.

[teslar]

161. labels

As you say once you put the label on you stop hearing the words and that is bad. We need to keep learning from them so we can change them and realize what they are planning. remember the "art of war" information and knowing your emeny is needed to win. the real war is not about words it's about changing attitude by example. if someone did some specific action hurting one person then call them out, if it's just words ignore them and remember who they are. there well always be bigots and low ego types that can only life by stepping on people.

Another thing; when i was young i was litttle guy and new on the block so the bully's thought i was easy target. lol they learned "I NEVER STOP" so look out. so soon they went for others, but i always was there to help the other's soon the bullys were gone. ARMY ANTS WIN AGAIN. many small voices make for big action.

[Maru Kitteh]

162. Ignoring "just words" is not a tenable strategy for people who are not white men.

Full stop.

[Orrex]

168. Ah, yes. Another call to "reach out to" and "understand" Trump voters

Sorry, not interested.

They were stupid long before I got around to calling them stupid, and they've put up mighty walls against reason, evidence, argument and reality in general.

They are stubbornly, proudly and passionately stupid, worshiping Reagan even as his policies continue to brutalize them.


Give me a detailed and specific plan to awaken them. Otherwise, thanks, but I'll jettison the terminally stupid and move onto people who might actually be persuaded to rethink things.

[RadiationTherapy]

169. Do you mind copy/pasting the part of my OP that advocates "reaching out" and "understanding"?

or the part where I imply they can or should be "woken up"?

I try to communicate as clearly as I can and I am unsure why you - and some others - think I am advocating reaching out, understanding and so on.

[Orrex]

175. It's all of a piece

Last edited Wed Feb 22, 2017, 09:21 AM - Edit history (1)

Let me see all of your posts exhorting Trump voters to stop calling us "Lib-tards" and "snowflakes," instead of jumping on the bandwagon of finger-waggers telling Liberals not to be so mean to our Trump-voting brethren.

You are scolding us for dehumanizing a group that has, in some cases, literally advocated the extermination of whole groups of humans based on skin color, gender identity or national origin. I reject such lectures on postmodern "othering," scolding me for my cruel dehumanization of Trump voters when I merely call them stupid. They are obviously still humans, no matter how stupid they are.

I've seen similar lectures warning that, by "dehumanizing" them, we are dehumanizing ourselves. That's a lovely bit of wordplay, but it's based on the same false premise and is therefore inherently flawed.

And then you declare your own noble enlightenment by revealing that you are "unimpressed with such labels." Well bravo to you. Perhaps some day we'll all sit contemplatively beneath a tree with you.


Though you didn't use the exact phrases "reaching out" and "understanding," the message is the same. If I - and some others - see a different meaning in what you wrote, then perhaps you might reconsider how you wrote it.

[LAS14]

189. Why would they post such stuff in DU?

Let me see all of your posts exhorting Trump voters to stop calling us "Lib-tards" and "snowflakes," instead of jumping on the bandwagon of finger-waggers telling Liberals not to be so mean to our Trump-voting brethren.

Why should anyone post that sort of message here? The targets are obviously not readers of DU. We post stuff here that we think is important for the Democratic left. And being smart about our enemies is important!

[Orrex]

193. Self-delete. Replied in the wrong spot.

Last edited Wed Feb 22, 2017, 02:34 PM - Edit history (1)

Or maybe that's just what I want you to think.

[LAS14]

199. Did you respond to the wrong post? This doesn't seem directed at my question.

[Orrex]

200. NO DAMMIT I'LL REPLY WHEREVER I WANT!!!!!1!

Whoops--sorry about that.

[treestar]

171. Aren't they the ones doing that?

To people in groups they detest, Muslim, etc? They are the ones who need to be lectured.

[Gothmog]

195. Why Democrats Need to Forget About "Reaching Out"

Reaching out to trump voters is a waste of time for now http://prospect.org/article/why-democrats-need-forget-about-reaching-out

Nevertheless, "reaching out" to Trump voters seems on its face like sound advice. After all, Democrats lost, and if they had won over some of those voters, they would have won. So isn't that the simplest path to a different outcome next time around?

The answer is no. To understand why, we have to get a few things straight about both Trump voters themselves and the different kind of electorates the parties face in different election years.

Let's start with the fact that Hillary Clinton actually spent an extraordinary amount of time reaching out to Republicans. Although Clinton didn't make very many mistakes in 2016, this was one of the worst: She decided that instead of mounting a purely partisan attack on Trump, she would try to define him not as the distilled and rancid essence of Republicanism, but as outside of Republicanism, in the hopes that a significant number of Republicans would conclude that Trump was unacceptable and they could vote for Clinton and still consider themselves loyal to their party.

But it failed. According to exit polls, Trump got the votes of 88 percent of Republicans, nearly as well as the party's other recent nominees, and no worse than Clinton did among Democrats. Might that argument have succeeded for a different Democrat? Perhaps. But despite the endless profiles of working-class white Republicans, there are actually a number of different kinds of people who voted for Trump. Some were those die-hard fans, in their "Make America Great Again" hats and "Trump That Bitch" t-shirts. For some reason, these people, the ones who love Trump the most and hate Democrats the most, are the ones Democrats are most often instructed to reach out to.

Then there were the loyal Republicans, those who decided that whatever Trump's weaknesses, the most important thing was having a Republican in the White House who would fill the executive branch and the courts with Republican appointees and sign whatever bills the Republican Congress sent to him.

And last are those who essentially decided, "What the hell, let's try this." They didn't like the way things were going in their communities or their lives, and figured that unlike Clinton, Trump represented change. Some of them had even voted for Barack Obama before. Maybe they bought the ludicrous idea that Trump is a businessman so he knows how to "get things done," or maybe they wanted Washington to change in some way, or maybe they believed Trump when he said he'd take on the elites and bring terrific jobs pouring back into America. But one way or another, they decided to give him a shot.

[Nwgirl503]

201. Understanding others' capabilities and/or limits and treating them accordingly is not dehumanizing

If someone has consistently proven themselves to be lacking in critical thinking skills, inability to understand basic concepts and ideas, unable to be unbiased, easily influenced, unable to perform independent thought on even the most basic level....well....calling a spade a spade isn't dehumanizing.

If you want to put your financial, familial, bodily safety on the line instead of risking being dehumanizing, knock yourself out. I personally am not going to put Jimmy in charge of my accounting when he's proven over and over again that he can't count or do basic arithmatic, just to make myself (or anyone else) feel better about not labeling someone or acknowledging he's differently abled.